Pfizer vaccine roll-out in Dhaka next week

The government will start administering Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine at four vaccination centres in the capital from next week.

"Those who have already completed registration and waiting to be vaccinated will get the jabs. The Pfizer vaccine will only be administered in Dhaka city," Health Minister Zahid Maleque told The Daily Star yesterday.

The four designated vaccination centres include Kurmitola General Hospital and Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), said the minister.

A consignment of 106,000 doses of the Pfizer vaccine reached Dhaka on Monday. The government received the vaccine under the global vaccine-sharing initiative COVAX.

Health officials said as Pfizer vaccine requires about negative 70 degrees Celsius storage, it will not be sent outside the capital. The required temperature is far below the normal refrigeration levels.

They also said administering the vaccine with 0.3 ml syringes would be a challenging task for the health professionals.

The health minister said apart from the registered people, frontline health workers and other frontliners who did not get the first shot will be given priority in the Pfizer vaccine.

The Directorate General of Drug Administration had approved the emergency use of the Pfizer vaccine on May 27.

Bangladesh is expected to receive 68 million doses of Covid vaccines from COVAX.

Zahid Maleque said the country will also receive six lakh Sinopharm vaccine doses as gift from China next week.

"Chinese officials have informed us that the vaccine will arrive in seven to 10 days," he added.

On May 12, Bangladesh received a gift of five lakh Sinopharm vaccine jabs from China. The government has already started administering those doses to healthcare students on a priority basis.

Asked about the procurement of the Chinese vaccine, the minister said they sent all the related documents to the Chinese authority after signing those and were waiting for their response.

Bangladesh suspended administering the first dose of Covid vaccine on April 26 due to a depleting stock. The administration of the second dose was also suspended in many places due to the same reason.

The government has only around three lakh doses of Covid vaccine in hand.

Bangladesh had started mass inoculation against the novel coronavirus on February 7 with a target of vaccinating all its citizens aged 18 and above in phases.

The government suspended the vaccination registration process on May 5.

Bangladesh's mass inoculation campaign stumbled after Serum Institute of India failed to ship Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine.

As per an agreement, Bangladesh was supposed to receive three crore shots of the vaccine in six months.

Serum delivered the first 50 lakh doses in January, but shipped only 20 lakh shots the following month. No shipment has been received by Bangladesh from the company since then.